Vallejo's binding arbitration faces court test

Vallejo officials will face off this week against three residents pushing to have a court validate a petition to throw out the city's binding arbitration rules in an upcoming election.

On Friday morning, Byrne Conley, Jim Libien and J.D. Miller are seeking Solano Superior Court Judge David Power's support for the thousands of petition signatures they gathered in and after April 2008.

Conley, an attorney representing his co-petition authors, argues that the petitioners were given the incorrect number of required signatures, and that some of the approximately 2,700 signatures invalidated for various reasons should be accepted.

At issue is Vallejo's method of employee contract dispute resolution. When city and union negotiators are unable to forge a contract a professional arbitrator may be called in to render a decision binding on both sides.

Most California cities that lack charters allow city councils to have the final say in such disputes, according to the so-called Citizens to Remove Binding Arbitration from Vallejo Charter, a local group to change Vallejo's governing document.

Conley said he must win on both issues in court to get the referendum on a city ballot.

"If we don't proceed with this, we'd have to start all over again," Conley said. "Basically, (with binding arbitration) you lose control over the city ... it's not that I'm against the employees or anti-union or anything like that."

Both Vallejo officials and Solano County Registrar of Voters employees are named in the court action. The registrar's office verifies voters' signatures on the petition.

Bernadette Curry, representing the county, argued that the issues the residents' group raise are "not just simple technicalities which may be overlooked."

In her response to the court action, Curry contends that a new petition with sufficient signatures can be gathered.

She also states that there is no evidence that the petitioners would have changed their signature-collecting tactics if they had known of a need for "a mere 137 more signatures" than they were initially told -- not when they had gathered a more than 2,700-signature buffer.

The court hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. in Judge David Power's room 201, Hall of Justice, Fairfield.